HIGH PRIEST OF CALIFORNIA (1953)
High Priest of California
  • Royal Books Giant #G-20, 1953

  • Beacon #B130, 1956 (bound together with Wild Wives)

  • Re/Search, 1987 (bound together with Wild Wives, and a play version of High Priest)


    • "She was leaning against the door. Her smile was a sickly twisted grimace; the sort a prisoner gives a judge when he's asked if he has anything to say before he's sentenced."

    Russell Haxby is a ruthless used car salesman obsessed with manipulating and cavorting with married women. In this classic of Hard-boiled fiction, Charles Willeford crafts a wry, sardonic tale of hypocrisy, intrigue and lust set in San Francisco in the early fifties. In High Priest of California every sentence masks innuendo, every detail hides a clue, and every used car sale is as outrageous as every seduction.

    "The hairiest, ballsiest, hard-boiled ever penned. One continuous orgy of prolonged foreplay!" -Dennis McMillan

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